The ActivTrak Benchmarks Guide

This benchmarks guide lets you easily compare your productivity, focus, and collaboration time metrics against those of our customer base and set goals accordingly. We have analyzed data from approximately 135,000 ActivTrak users and established benchmarks for the median, upper quartile (75th percentile) and lower quartile (25th percentile) for 3 metrics – Productive, Collaboration, and Focus Time.

Note that these metrics only capture time spent on digital activities on business-related applications / sites. 

• Productive Time: The average amount of time a user is engaged in Productive-classified applications or sites. This value includes Active and Passive time.
• Collaboration Time: The average amount of time a user spends engaged on applications classified as "Chat & Messaging" or "Meeting Software".
• Focus Time: Working time in which an employee is engaged and working on a single task without multitasking (interruptions or attention shifts) and collaboration activities.

Learn more about the different Productive, Collaboration, and Focus metrics included in ActivTrak Premium by accessing our Data Glossary.

Productive Hours / Day Benchmark

Focused Hours / Day Benchmark

Collaboration Hours / Day Benchmark

Methodology

The ActivTrak Data Science team collected data on Productive, Collaboration, and Focus Time from 135,000 ActivTrak users across all industries and teams for the time period starting January 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2024. Each metric was calculated per user per calendar week.

To calculate the per user / per day averages, the metrics were divided by the number of days a user worked in a given week OR by 5, if a user worked more than 5 days.

• 1-5 days with activity: divide by number of days worked
• 6-7 days with activity: divide by 5 to avoid diluting the average

Finally, the extremes were clipped at each end of the distribution to arrive at the benchmarks shared above.

Tips from Productivity Lab 

Understanding your unique environment:

Each organization is unique as it pertains to its productivity – specifically, its productivity inputs (which includes these metrics). While businesses may produce the same output, the way in which the output is achieved varies.

It is important to evaluate your productivity metrics in relation to these benchmarks with this in mind. Your numbers may fall below or above the provided averages as a result of a variety of unique factors (e.g., efficiency of process flows, degree of non-digital work, variability in labor structures, or recent growth or downsizing efforts). 

Helpful questions to consider across the entire organization and for each team include:

• Productivity:
  • Is my organization/team currently short-staffed or over-staffed?
  • Does my organization/team complete its work outside their digital computer device?

• Focus:
  • Do the work demands of my organization/team require multitasking?
  • Does my organization/team require ample time for problem-solving, creativity, and deep-work?

• Collaboration:
  • To what degree are meetings taking place in-person or remotely across my organization/team?
  • What emphasis does my organization/team put on individual work versus collaboration?

The Productivity Lab recommends evaluating these external benchmarks in conjunction with your business’s internal historic benchmarks, both the Team’s Top Quartile Average and the Team’s Average. In evaluating both the external and internal, leaders are best positioned to identify goals that realistically unlock the productivity potential that exists within their environment.